June 26, 2008

I showed up at school yesterday and found three new books waiting for me: Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton (2008 edition, hot off the presses!) and two Cambridge titles: Zooarchaeology and Teeth. After reading my packet of teaching evaluations from Cortland and chatting up a colleague I hadn't seen in a while, I headed into a 90-minute meeting with my advisor. I laid out my new plan for isotope analysis (test all first molars for Sr, reserve $2k for further tests on any immigrants I find, and send 50 individuals to a colleague at USF for C/N so as not to waste time learning how to do it myself), and he fully agreed with me. After picking up a lovely smoothie, I settled in to write some email and got a message from a bioarchaeologist who might want me to collaborate on her project with my Roman skeletons - more on this as (if?) it develops. Then I headed over to the isotope geochemistry lab and harassed the lab tech about strontium. There are many steps to this procedure: first, I have to section all 112 teeth into thirds. Then, I need to learn how to use the micromill to drill out 5-20 μg of enamel from near the DEJ. And then the lab tech will teach me how to prepare the enamel and run it through the mass spec. Everyone's schedules are kind of hectic for the summer, though, so I might only get about 5-10 Sr results by August. This should, however, be enough information to bullshit (ahem, I mean, extrapolate) an abstract to the AAPAs. So yay, everything's going as planned, if a bit slowly.

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is a bioarchaeologist and assistant professor at the University of West Florida. This is her personal blog about archaeology, bioanthropology, and the classical world. Follow her on Twitter (@DrKillgrove) or G+, or follow PbO on Facebook.